


Many Moons That Leave

by matan4il



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: 911CrackWeek2020, 911crackweek, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Flashbacks, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27699815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matan4il/pseuds/matan4il
Summary: Luna Buckley-Diaz always knew she'd grow up to be an astronaut. She simply had that passion for adventure and that daring nature that called on her to take long, perilous journeys such as traveling to the center of the Earth (which Jules Verne made enticing, but her science teacher was adamant would not be so possible) or going to the moon. Astronaut was always right up her alley. Or growing up to be a mermaid, that would have been cool, too.What Luna didn't expect was becoming a time traveler. It wasn't exactly on the curriculum in high school or a course you could take at university. But as it turns out, the courses you could take if you dreamed of becoming an astronaut aligned very closely with that and made NASA consider you for their new, top secret time traveling agency, especially if you happened to be featured on the news for being the country's youngest volunteer in the youth firefighting program. Which honestly, if you had two dads who were both firefighters, was pretty much a given.Buddie's daughter (with a small collection of ficlets about her you can find linked in the notes) travels to the past.For 911crackweek2020, day 2:Time travel shenanigans
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 73





	Many Moons That Leave

**Author's Note:**

> The small collection of ficlets about Buck and Eddie becoming parents and Chris becoming big brother to Luna is called [_And Illuminate My Life_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23444050/chapters/56193817).
> 
> Thank you to the wonderful [Sibbed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sibbed/works) for giving me the title. It's from the song _Cielo de un solo color_ (a sky of only one color) by No Te Va Gustar, thanks to this beautiful line: "So many moons that leave and we are waiting for the seemingly broken heart to wake." 
> 
> I'm also thanking the lovely [Toughpaperround](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToughPaperRound/pseuds/ToughPaperRound) for the amazing beta, as always! 
> 
> Don't hesitate to come say hi, send feedback, requests, questions or get updates at [my Tumblr](matan4il.tumblr.com/)!

Luna Buckley-Diaz always knew she'd grow up to be an astronaut. She simply had that passion for adventure and that daring nature that called on her to take long, perilous journeys such as traveling to the center of the Earth (which Jules Verne made enticing, but her science teacher was adamant would not be so possible) or going to the moon. Astronaut was always right up her alley. Or growing up to be a mermaid, that would have been cool, too.

What Luna didn't expect was becoming a time traveler. It wasn't exactly on the curriculum in high school or a course you could take at university. But as it turns out, the courses you could take if you dreamed of becoming an astronaut aligned very closely with that and made NASA consider you for their new, top secret time traveling agency, especially if you happened to be featured on the news for being the country's youngest volunteer in the youth firefighting program. Which honestly, if you had two dads who were both firefighters, was pretty much a given.

Her recruitment into the new program was only secured after she was sworn to secrecy and made to sign who knows how many Non Disclosure Agreements, which Luna of course broke immediately, but for the sake of three men alone, her fathers and her older brother, Chris. She could never take on a mission like this without telling them what she was going to do.

"No way!" Daddy said right away, his blue eyes stern. The funny thing was, of course, that Papa swears when they were younger and working together at the 118, it was always Daddy who was the more reckless one. Especially when it came to rope rescues. 

"Yeah, but I bet you didn't mind much when he was in that harness, right?" She had once grinned shamelessly at him, when she was already in her early twenties (and good luck explaining that to her past teen self, who would have gone, 'ewwww, gross' at the thought of Papa being turned on by Daddy in a harness).

And Papa had blushed the way he always did whenever his love for Daddy was mentioned, while the latter had smirked and replied, "Oh, did he! There was a reason why he always wanted to be around for the rope rescues."

"Yes," Papa had snapped right out of his moment of shyness, "to save your dumb ass from getting yourself killed on the job."

"That's not what you called my ass back then."

"Not in front of Luna!"

And Papa had said that with a reproaching tone, but he had also smiled immediately after that goofy, dreamy smile that he only gets when he looks at Daddy, which was when Luna had stopped listening to those two flirt, because even in her twenties, there's a limit.

"Well..." Papa said after Daddy voiced his immediate objection.

"No! Are you kidding me? No, Eddie, our daughter is not signing up for an experimental time traveling project. Do you realize how many things can go wrong with the machinery?"

"I do."

"And that's before we get to the issues of time travel itself?"

"Definitely."

"And that we may not..." he paused when his voice almost broke. "We may not see her again even if everything else is successful?"

Papa didn't reply, but he nodded.

"Then where's the question here, Eddie? She's not doing this."

"Could anything have stopped you if you were the one getting this offer? I don't want her to hate us if we try that."

"Papa, I would never..."

He came over and hugged her. "You think you wouldn't, because you've never had a parent kill one of your dreams. And you're not about to discover what that's like. Right, Buck?"

Daddy looked at the two of them and after a quiet moment, he joined them. "You," he said into Luna's curls, right after he laid a kiss there, "go kick ass, take care of yourself and no matter what, come back to us. You hear me?"

She hears those words playing out again in her mind while she stares up at the big time portal in front of her. Like all government products, it's grey and unimpressive. A simple-looking metallic circle. Yet after three years of training to step through it, Luna's heart is pounding at the sight. The tech men and women of the TTA (Time Travel Agency, because of course NASA would display zero creativity in naming this sub-agency) were working frantically all around her, punching keys on various computers and shouting numbers to each other with great urgency. As launch time was approaching, the portal began to spin and a forcefield was created at its center, purplish and shooting out small bolts of lightning from the edges. Not exactly an inviting sight, but she's seen it before. It's still different, knowing that this time, she'll be the one stepping through it, instead of a dog or a chimp equipped with a smart chip and a camera being sent through. She's watched those launches and now, it's her turn. She's ready.

The big display board is set for the countdown and from here on out, Luna doesn't really hear a thing. People shout commands at her, but she doesn't need those. She's memorized the sequence of actions by heart and has practiced it countless times. Ten, the first steps that she takes, eight, her comm and extractor, designed to appear as a watch, which she straps on wrist, five, last check that she has everything in place, two, last step up to the gate, one, she raises her right foot. Zero. She's going through.

The feeling of traveling through time is a weird, jello-y thing, nothing like the elegant floating through mist she used to imagine. For a second, she considers asking for a raise. They're not paying her enough to deal with this icky, slimy sensation. Then it's gone and she can open her eyes and look around. The estimation of the scientists working on the project was that she would end up in the Victorian age of the United States. 

But the cars driving past her are distinctly not Victorian. In fact, things are so normal wherever she looks, that if she weren't standing outside rather than inside the TTA lab and if it weren't for the lingering jello-y sensation, she would have doubted she had stepped through a time portal at all.

Luna was warned that there was a certain chance she would land in a different past than expected. The range, she was told, was anywhere between the United States' War of Independence and five minutes before she left. The odds were infinitesimal, she was reassured. And that word was emphasized repeatedly, almost as if using it made the chances of landing outside the Victorian age even smaller. Well, much good that did. She really hopes it's not five minutes ago. Sure, for science her traveling even that small amount of time back would still be a huge breakthrough, but this was not the kind of adventure she was dreaming of.

She tries her comm in an attempt to make contact with Headquarters and give an initial report of the mission, but all she gets is static. Luna tries again, but no dice. She decides to go for a third attempt later, but her gut feeling says the result will be the same. Her comm equipment had never failed before, so it can't be incidental that it did twice in a row now. That's not great, but it's not the end of the world either. She hopes the recording equipment is working, but she wouldn't be grieving if that failed either. Her extractor, on the other hand...

Luna's not gonna dwell on that worst case scenario, not before she actually figures out what's going on with her mission. She scans the area for a clue of when she's landed. A small kiosk has newspapers laid out and she quickly gets to one and has a look at the date on the front page. 

23rd of November 2021. 

It leaves her shaken up. This is her fathers' unofficial anniversary, the day on which they got together. For two tough men, it was almost vomit-inducingly sweet, how in love with each other they managed to remain through the years, always celebrating this day. They'd always have a date night in the dark, out in the back garden with only one string of fairy lights on, "because it was in the darkness that we saw the light," Daddy once mused.

They talked numerous times about the great power outage that paralyzed most of the Los Angeles municipal area on this date and made them realize their feelings for each other, but the way Daddy explained their personal tradition struck a chord with Luna. One day, if she's lucky enough, she hopes to witness a love like her dads'. Maybe even experience it...

But as she stares at the mundane L.A newspaper headlines, then inspects the calm people walking around her, it hits Luna in a way it never has before, just how many people have died due to this blackout. How many people will die, she corrects herself. She has a few more hours until then. She can do something about it, save them. Isn't that what her fathers and the LA fire department have always taught her to try?

It's a sunny day, but judging by her surroundings, it's early morning hours. Soon enough, as she had heard that the investigation into the cause of the blackout had concluded, the temperatures will rise quickly and intensely to such a degree, that they will officially reach heatwave levels in the early noon. By the afternoon hours, the situation will be unbearable. Massive use of air conditioning and other electrical means for cooling off will generate incredibly high power demands, which will overtax an older transformer in the city's power grid. It will overheat to the point where it will melt and cause a fire that would spread, taking out the whole grid. It will require hours to get it under control, to get the power back, paralyzing the whole city in the meantime and costing countless lives.

Luna has to do something to stop it, but what? She would need someone with access to City Hall, let them know what's about to happen. Someone reliable, who the people in charge would listen to, preferably with an understanding of the power grid.

Uncle Michael. That's Luna's immediate go to. Even if he won't be able to help her himself, he'll know the right people who can and make sure that they will. Now all she has to do is get to him. Simple, she grimaces, given how she's not even sure where exactly she is.

Luna turns to the kiosk owner and asks him for the place's address. He seems like he's the grumpy type, but she's thankfully got her Daddy's charms and big puppy eyes trick that always get her the help she needs.

The address he gives her isn't impossibly far from her target, Auntie Athena's house, but it's too much to walk there by foot. She springs into action, scouting the quaint little neighborhood she ended up in, alternating between walking and running, until she sees it.

It's an old skateboard that's been left unattended, lying upside down on a patch of grass and while Luna doesn't like the prospect of taking it, the truth is that this is inconsequential in comparison with all of the lives that might be saved. That could even include that of the skateboard's owner or one of their loved ones. 

Luna carefully inspects the empty street, checking that there are no signs of anyone approaching, before she swiftly flips the skateboard over onto its primitive wheels and gets on it. For a second, she's unpleasantly surprised by how unstable she is, though she quickly manages to re-find her center of balance. Such a bummer that it will be a long while before hoverboards are invented. 

She does borrow whichever of her old hoverboard skills seem to fit and sure, this skateboard ride is not as smooth and the ground is much closer, but eventually she starts feeling like she's in control of the little death trap, as she should be.

She skates her way to Aunt Athena's house, grateful that the almost 25 years she's traveled into the past haven't changed these streets. When she gets there, she jumps off the skateboard unceremoniously, limping a bit as she forces it to a halt. 

Knocking on the door, she expects Athena or Uncle Bobby. It's May who opens the door and damn, Luna really needs to start thinking things through beforehand.

That's something Papa used to berate Daddy for. "You don't consider the risks and consequences enough," he would rant from time to time when they'd come back from a joint shift.

"You love it!"

"I absolutely do not."

"Hmmm. It allows you to act high and mighty with me, while secretly admiring my guts and the way I figure things out despite it."

Papa would stare at Daddy in response, an annoyed and unamused expression on his face, but with time Luna learned to read the little wrinkles at the corner of his eyes as the fond smile this secretly was. Much like Daddy must have.

"Hi!" Luna raises her hand in an awkward wave, her own smile probably weird and uncomfortable, to match. It's so odd, seeing May younger than herself. And what does one say in a situation like this anyway? Especially when time is precious and running out? "Alright, yes," Luna says with determination. "I should probably start with some ridiculous lie to get your help and maybe you'd fall for it briefly, but at some point it would fail and you'd be suspicious of me even more than if I just came out and told you the truth, insane as it may sound. And then I'd have to struggle to convince you that I am who I claim to be. But you're my May, even though you're older than me, I grew up with you, I know you, so we're gonna skip all that. I'm just gonna tell you, I'm Eddie and Buck's daughter. They're not a couple yet, but you've told me you guessed they were going to end up together at some point. That everyone did and the only reason all of you didn't have a betting pool on when, was that they were being stupid and it was taking forever."

The bigger May's eyes grew during this, the higher her eyebrows climbed. She opens her mouth to speak when Luna goes silent, but doesn't say anything at first. When she finally does, her voice is small. "You're making it sound as if you've traveled here from the future."

Luna smiles in a way that she hopes is reminiscent of her normal charms and not this clusterfuck of an introduction. "I have."

"Oh," May replies and stares.

"Yeah," Luna purses her lips and for a few long minutes, they do nothing but gawk at each other.

"Can we maybe not skip the part where you convince me about your identity?"

"Okay, how can I do that? Oooh, what if I know something you haven't told anyone other than Daddy? I mean, Buck..."

"There's only one thing that I tol..."

"Your first crush! It was... ummm, is on that actress, Aisha Hinds!"

"Oh my God, he told you? He promised to keep that secret forever!"

"Well, he's only going to do it in twenty years, so that's basically like forever? Besides, you were there when he mentioned it and you laughed, too! You said she was too gorgeous and fierce to resist, so it wasn't your fault."

"Because she is!"

"I got curious, so I looked for pictures and I agree. It's insane how good she looks for her age, you'd never guess it!"

"Right?" May smiles and there she is, Luna recognizes her and grins back in relief. "Still kind of hard to believe you're from the future, though..."

"Hard, but you do believe me, right? Because you can tell I'm close to Buck and you know everyone in his life in your present. And I do need your help, a lot of lives depend on it. There's going to be a dangerous fire in the power grid and so many people in immediate peril unless we can stop it!"

"What can I do to help?" May asks, while moving aside and finally letting Luna in.

"We need to contact your dad, I'll fill you in on all the details, you pass them along to him and he can use them to stop this fire from breaking out."

"How do I explain having this info?"

"You don't have to," Luna says confidently. "Just tell him you can't say and to trust you. Uncle Michael loves you so much. Just like my dads do me, so if I asked them to simply have faith in me and help, they would and try to get to the bottom of whatever's going on later. Your dad will do the same and that's what we need right now."

May nods, maybe not quite convinced, but she goes for the phone anyway. After an initial briefing, she calls her dad. The conversation doesn't take too long and advances much as Luna had predicted. May repeats the questions every time she needs more information or answers to pass on and Luna whispers them to her.

When May hangs up, she looks at Luna questioningly. Probably attempting to guess whether it's worked or not. It's not immediately evident how they could tell the quickest.

"I guess now we wait for a phone call from your dad. Depending on how it goes for him, he might be able to fill you in. If not, we'll just have to wait and see if the electricity goes out in the city."

"I... don't think we need to wait." May points to Luna's hand. As she raises it, she watches her own limb flashing in and out. It must have worked. They've stopped the blackout. They've saved countless lives. And they've also... they've stopped her dads from getting together.

"You're disappearing!" May goes pale. "But... I don't understand. Why would you? You can't be biologically theirs!"

Luna studies the rest of her body and it appears fine for now, but her hand is most definitely compromised. "Because it doesn't matter. I'm their daughter. They're the ones who turned me into the person I am and without them meeting, Luna might exist biologically, but she wouldn't be me. She... she wouldn't even be called Luna."

She could never hear enough about their love for each other, which she always on some level sensed had shaped her into who she was. "I thought your Papa was gorgeous," Daddy told her as he was tucking her in after she had asked once more for her favorite bedtime story, the one about how they finally became a couple. "From the first moment I saw him. But I was sure he would never think about me in the same way."

"Because your Daddy is a knucklehead who's blind to all the signs."

"What signs?"

"C'mon, even Carla says she could see hearts in my eyes when you introduced her to me." Papa turned to her, "I didn't even ask and he was there, helping me with your brother when I was on my own and struggling. A guy who's willing to do things for you like that, who's considerate and kind? That's a definite plus for dating that guy."

"Or girl," Daddy interjected.

"Or girl," Papa agreed, looking at him and smiling in a way Luna easily could imagine was precisely what he had looked like when Daddy had brought Carla over.

'Love you,' they mouthed to each other, as if not uttering it out loud will somehow make it slip under their daughter's radar. 

Their love had always been so palpable, Luna could almost reach out and touch it. Note how soft it is. Wrap herself up in that tenderness as if it were her favorite blanket. In moments of sadness, fatigue or hurt, she did. How can that love not exist anymore?

Or her?

Luna's completely still as the space between the atoms in her hand expands, fragmenting her... or maybe that's just her imagination playing tricks on her. She can't let it. As she stares at her fingers fading in and out, all she's sure of is that there's nothing in this world as pure as the love her fathers have for each other. She has to save that. And it's as simple as that once her inner compass is aligned with that goal. Everything else will fall into place or it won't, but that is how she must proceed. This is her true north. Always has been.

"The blackout," Luna breathes out.

"Yeah, we averted it."

"We have to make it happen again. But not for everyone, obviously! My dads. That's how they figured out their feelings for each other, so we have to make the two of them think they're caught in a blackout or they'll never stop being oblivious idiots!"

"That..." May says hesitantly.

"Sounds like a crazy plan, I get it, but..."

"No, I was going to say, that might be the only thing that works with Buck and Eddie, I'm kinda surprised none of us thought of it before."

"So you're in?" Luna beams.

"Oh, I am so in! But how are we going to do it?"

"Hmmm. I guess the first step is retracing what happened with them back then. In a few hours, but like, in the original timeline. Wow, that's weird to say."

"It's weird to hear it, too." May's smile crooks a bit to the side. "Okay, what were they supposed to do in... there?"

Daddy laughed at her request to hear their story again, while he was shampooing her hair, Papa by the sink, shaving and pretending not to be listening. "I was just coming back from a shift and I didn't feel like being on my own after that, so I tagged along with your Papa to spend the evening with him and Chris," he recounted.

"He used to do that a lot," Papa added. "That's why I didn't suspect anything right away."

"Because you had nothing to be suspicious about? Come on, you're gonna make Luna think I was planning some move."

"Weren't you?"

"There was a city wide power outage, Eddie! That's a bit much for a move!"

"I wouldn't put it past you." He grinned and winked at Luna. "Your Daddy really, really liked me."

"Not enough to cause a blackout," Daddy mumbled with displeasure, but Papa's hand was already slipping into his and squeezing it softly.

Luna might have a plan. "They were in Papa's house... Eddie's. If we can get there and fake a power outage, maybe it will have the same effect as last time. We have to get there after the end of their shift. Do you know when Uncle Bobby's supposed to be finished today?"

"He's not going to be home before late afternoon."

"Okay," Luna bites the side of her bottom lip, like Papa does. "We can use that time! I grew up in that house, but we'd have to inspect it more closely than that. I say we go over there and do that, figure out what it would take to recreate the blackout for my dads and use the next couple of hours to get whatever equipment we don't have and might need."

"Right. Then we should probably get going!" May declares, but then she tilts her head, her eyes zoomed in on Luna's hand. "But not like that. Oh, I have an idea! It's already hot outside and you said it will get hotter, but I can lend you one of my hoodies... It has a huge pocket that you can hide your hand in easily."

"I'll take that..."

"Come on!" May gestures for Luna to follow her into her bedroom. She rummages through the closet and pulls out a big, comfortable looking gray hoodie with a sizable pocket at the front for both hands, offering more than enough space for Luna. She quickly pulls it over her top while May grabs her set of keys and a wallet. "You good? Then let's go!"

They head out and she drives them over to the Diaz house. Alright, the skateboard wasn't that bad, but Luna is happy enough she gets to ditch it. When they get to their destination, she immediately gets out and starts inspecting the building. Round the house she goes, May following her and answering any question that Luna has while she's checking every door, window or other possible source of light that could clue her parents in.

They're about three quarters finished circling the house, when Luna registers that they haven't come across the main fuse box. 

She points that out and adds, "We might have missed it."

"Maybe. We can split up, you continue and I'll go back and check to see if we did?" May suggests.

"Great!" 

Luna continues with the house inspection. It's a bit unnerving, seeing it from the outside, through this specific prism and that sense of eeriness stands out more, now that she's alone. She's almost come full circle around the house when she hears the sound of clanking against the sidewalk. Luna recognizes it immediately, though the pitch is different to the one she's used to. These crutches are probably smaller in size and sure enough, when she looks over, she spots her big brother coming at her... her ten year old big brother.

"Chris?" She shouldn't, but... Luna's seen pictures of him as a kid of course, it's an entirely different thing to see her older brother like this though. The little jab in her heart spells out to her how homesick she really is. He's so close, all she would have to do is reach out her hand to touch him...

"How do you know my name?" he asks.

Everything about him is so familiar and still, he's a stranger. She doesn't want him to be. 

"Because one day, I'm going to be your sister." Luna smiles at him with all the love she felt whenever her dads mentioned that it was Chris who had named her, or when her big brother would bring her crayons so they could draw together, would explain the things they saw on television, or would let her play with his curls. There wasn't one day when he didn't give her a kiss, on her cheek or the top of her head. It was a few years before she'd discovered that not all big brothers were like that. And sure, on occasion they fought, too. But he was her best friend. In the sea of life that every kid has to learn to swim in, he was her rock, offering security and rest through his love.

His eyes flicker as he looks up at her. "That would be nice," he says. "I always wanted a sister."

In that moment, Luna would give a kidney to hug him. But it would be too much, so she settles for, "Yeah, it's going to be pretty awesome. But hey, it depends on something."

"What?"

"I brought May with me and we'll do our best to get..." Chris is taking this really well, but won't 'our dads' still be too odd for him? "your dad and Buck to be a couple. What do you think?"

Chris looks up at her, expression serious. "It's about time," he replies.

The warmth that spreads through Luna spreads out even through her disappearing hand.

"Okay," she smiles, "then if you see anything suspicious, don't clue them in. And maybe..."

Papa shook his head. "No, Chris wasn't there. I think your brother was really tired that day, because he went to bed early, even before the blackout started."

She hesitates. He'll head for bed soon anyway, why bring it up? On the other hand, this is about her fathers. Can she really take any chances? "Maybe, if you're alright with that, you can make sure that they're left completely on their own? It could help them see sense."

"See sense in the dark." Chris chuckles and Luna has no choice but to join him. It's the same infectious quality he's always had. 

"They're kind of stupid about it, aren't they?" she snorts.

"Yeah," he agrees solemnly. "You'll need lots of help. I'm in." 

Luna smiles. "Thank you!"

"Chris!" They hear a woman's voice from a distance. It's more youthful sounding, but there's no doubt that it's Carla.

"You have to go back to her now, I think." Luna nods in her direction.

"Okay. But..." Chris presses his lips together, before he continues. "If you're going to be my sister... Can I get a hug before I go?"

Luna doesn't stop to think about it, right away she leans in and embraces him with her whole heart. They will be siblings. She'll see to that.

When they break apart, he places a quick peck on her cheek before he turns around and leaves, calling out to Carla that he's coming. 

As he walks away, Luna can't help but note that her brother doesn't look particularly tired.

She quickly rounds the house in the opposite direction and runs into May. "Did you find it?" Luna asks.

"Yep, let me show you."

May leads her there and after a short inspection of the fuse box, Luna's mental checklist is complete. "I think I know everything we need, where's the nearest hardware store?"

"I'm not sure, but we can drive around until we find one?"

Luna checks her watch. They'll make it. "Alright, we can do this!"

They drive around the neighborhood and as the temperatures keep rising, she's grateful for the air conditioning in Aunt Athena's car. It takes them a while to find a store nearby, but thankfully their needs here are simple, so a thorough tour of it yields everything they were looking for. They pay for what they picked out and drive farther until they find an electronics store. This one's big and the components they're looking for are trickier, so it takes them a while, but eventually they complete their shopping and have everything from Luna's list.

While they're there, May's mobile phone rings. She checks the screen. "Dad." Then she picks up.

Luna watches her as she's clearly dodging demands for more information with promises that it will come later. They don't have the luxury of explaining everything to Uncle Michael just yet. To both their relief, even though it takes a while, May manages to placate him. Luna smiles to herself crookedly, recalling a million similar conversations she's had with her own fathers. 

When they leave this store, the sun has already begun to set. The power outage had... would have started before dusk. Yet all around them, street lamps are automatically being turned on as daylight gives way to the first signs of night. A few lone houses have their porch lights on and as Luna surveys the sight, it vibrates in her bones. She did well. All of these houses with families inside them, going about the beginning of their evening calmly and safely thanks to her decision...

She'll never regret what she did. If she could tell her dads, she's sure they would have approved. But she can't. So now, she has to save her family, too.

"You okay?" May places a warm hand on her arm. 

Luna nods nervously. "Once they kiss, I will be." She smiles at her cousin and hopes it's reassuring. 

By the time they're back at the Diaz house, it's dark and the lights inside have been turned on. Luna leans the small ladder that they got against the wall, places their shopping bags on the ground and gets the ropes out. "Right, we have to be fast and quiet." 

After they've tied all the ropes into a giant one, they start constructing a network from black tarp sheets, big enough to cover the house's windows. Luna and May watch the activity inside the house and whenever a room is empty, they hang the sheets all rolled up above the windows, tied to each other using the one single rope. 

Christopher has already made his excuses and gone to bed. Daddy and Papa were in the kitchen, drinking beers and being awkward around each other. Close, but not as much as they both obviously wanted to be.

Luna is by the front door, opening up the fuse box again and handing May the pliers, showing her which wire to cut in order for the entire house to lose power at once. "You okay with this?"

May grips them tightly in her right hand and in her left, the end of the long rope that they created. "It's not hard, but I am scared of screwing up the timing."

"Don't be. Place the open pliers around the wire before cutting, then think about closing your hand on the handle and pulling the rope exactly like when your dad used to take you rowing. You simply pull both oars at the same time."

"And the second that I do this, you'll set off that... transmitter?"

"Yep. Just to be on the safe side, because I'm telling you, those two, they were such idiots in love, they didn't even go outside once the lights went out. There's no way they're going to realize that the rest of the neighborhood still has power."

There's been a weird sensation creeping along Luna's fingers, which she's been ignoring. It's cold, almost as much as her disappearing limb, but that's not what matters at the moment. She's sitting on the ground by May, balancing the transmitter she improvised from the parts they had bought earlier on her crossed legs, one useless hand inside the hoodie pocket, the other hovering at attention above the device's buttons.

"Ready to act when I get to zero?" Luna asks.

"Born ready!"

"Three," she counts down and when has her voice become so shaky? "Two," her fingers are even colder than before, "One," something turns blurry at the edges of her vision, "Zero!"

May pulls the rope, letting down all the tarp sheets at once, and cuts the wire. Her timing is flawless. Luna pushes the first of a sequence of buttons on the transmitter. This would send out an important text message to both her dads' mobiles, set to look like it's from the LA Department of Power and Water, notifying all their clients about a city wide power outage.

On the second push, her finger goes through the button as if it were never there.

She's stunned, but in a numb sort of way, because she can't remember why she was trying to push that button in the first place. She tries to focus, but for whatever reason, she can't even recall her own name.

There are voices from the inside, along with the noise of steps moving towards her. There's a different voice beside her, perhaps scared. It's undecipherable to her. The tension that flowed through her lets up and begins to disappear, much like her fingers. Does that have any sort of a meaning? If so, it's not coming to her.

Her mind's a dark tunnel and she's driving down it effortlessly, going nowhere other than effortlessly with the flow. That's easy when nothing matters.

Until, that is... until there is a small light at the end of it and a memory found within it.

"I had a few candles in the kitchen," Papa recalled from the driver's seat when they were traveling to the mountains for a weekend of camping. Chris and Luna weren't being quiet during the drive and that had somehow turned it into story hour.

"Your Papa was prepared for a lot of different disasters, so he had at home anything we could have needed. I came along and when he took out those candles, I held one while he lit a match to light it."

"I looked up from it and your Daddy's face," Papa said as he was doing precisely that again, stealing as many glances as he could away from the road, "was lit up by the candle... and he was beautiful. I was so happy that if I was stuck in the dark, it was with him and not anyone else or by myself. I realized I didn't want him to go back to his loft. Not that night, not ever. So I asked him to stay." Luna knew he'd stopped talking to her and Chris at some point, but she didn't mind. It made it easier to imagine what that evening was like.

"I said yes," Daddy replied, his gaze transfixed on Papa.

"You weren't surprised?"

Daddy shrugged. "I knew how I felt about you. And I trusted it wouldn't be running so deeply if it wasn't mutual. You just had to catch up."

"Are you calling me slow?" Papa asked, with what sounded nothing like actual annoyance.

"Only because you are," Daddy teased.

"You can't call me slow if I made the first move to kiss you!"

"I can if it took you long enough."

"Are you really complaining?"

"No," Daddy said, quiet and happy. "When it was the right time, we saw the light."

Luna sees it, too. She remembers. The way that they looked at each other. There were no candles around, but her fathers were lit up from the inside. She remembers and pushes the button on the device again, to no avail, her airy finger going right through it. 

And again. 

And again, until she happens to catch it on a flicker of existence, when her finger is there more than it's gone, so she keeps going like that, working through the rest of the sequence. A small green dot bleeps on the screen, indicating transmission. Less than a second later, there's the sound of mobile phones going off coming from inside the house. The noise of steps is gone. Instead, there's a hushed conversation, followed by the sound of footsteps in the opposite direction, going towards the kitchen. Where the candles are.

Luna is aware she shouldn't, but she raises a corner of the tarp sheet over the nearest window and tries to peek in. There's no use, the kitchen isn't in her direct line of sight from here. But then it sinks in that she moved the sheet effortlessly. She examines her hand and it's simply there, no disappearing tricks. She pulls out her other arm from inside the hoodie pocket and is greeted by the same sight.

"It worked!" May exclaims.

"Yeah," Luna smiles. "I think it did."

"Well, if I'd have known it would be this easy, I would have stuck them inside a broom closet in the station a long time ago," May goes on.

Luna chuckles. Easy is relative, but she won't say that. "I guess they've both been waiting for this, so... yeah, if you had, it probably would have worked."

They'll have to wait a bit before they can hide the evidence of their stealthy operation and going by May's suggestion, they take a stroll around the neighborhood. They stop by an ice cream place for a small treat. It's like old times, only it's ones that haven't happened yet. After a couple of hours had passed, they get back to the house, take down the tarps and dispose of them. Then Luna catiously replaces the cut wire.

After she's done, she tries her comm again. Still nothing. It's time to put her extractor to the test, before anything might endanger what she's accomplished here. What's going to become of her if it doesn't work? She shakes that off.

"It's time for you to go, isn't it?" May sounds sad.

"Hey, you're gonna see me soon enough. Just... I'll be burping a bit more than I am right now. And you'll have to wait until we can talk about this."

She nods. "It's gonna be awesome once we do."

"It will be," Luna agrees and hugs May, suddenly and fully. For a beat, her embrace is returned before she has to break away and activate the extractor or she might not be able to anymore. Instantly, she's being pulled back by the time portal she had traveled through, moving through jello-y space again until she's thrown out through the metallic circle, landing on the air mattress awaiting her return on the floor of the lab.

Straight away, there's a whole bunch of people around her, asking questions, some to check how she is, others inquiring what has happened since the comm and recording equipment had failed during her trip.

"How long have I been gone for?" she asks and they don't hear her at first, too busy speaking themselves, but when she repeats her question, they notice and start falling silent. The third time, they can all hear her and one of the tech ladies answers her with, "Twenty three seconds."

"Thank you. If that's all it's been, then the debriefing can wait a few minutes. I have my family to call, I..." she inhales abruptly and deeply, "I have my family."


End file.
